Under a $60,000 contract with NITRC and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, a team of specialists will be trained to help Indian communities in negotiating contracts with the BIA and other government agencies. Assignment will be at the request of tribes.

The contract terms were announced in January by Francis McKinley, Center executive director.

The arrangement follows a re-affirmation by the Nixon administration and the BIA of present government policy to provide Indian people with the option to take over administration of any or all programs the Bureau provides for them.

Five community development specialists, recruited and trained by NITRC, will work to help a tribe decide whether it would benefit from a contract to take over operation of a program, or part of a program, or whether it would be better not to contract at all.

Under these options, a tribe can run an entire agency or program-say, a school- or only certain services such as janitorial, transportation or plant management.

One tribe already manages an entire school. At Rough Rock Demonstration School on the Navajo reservation in Arizona, a nonprofit Indian organization runs the school. The Ramah High School in New Mexico is operated by an all-Navajo school board. Also in New Mexico, the Zuni Tribe has taken over the former BIA agency. And, for some time now, various tribes have been taking on the responsibility for such services as law and order, social services, plant management, and other parts of BIA programs.

The community development specialists will come from both Indian and non-Indian personnel and will work for a year. Some of what they will do include:

• Informing clients about the details of Bureau contracting policy and providing cases of contract programs successfully started.
• Helping to look over tribal resources and potential for implementing a contract to perform one or more Bureau services.
• Advising clients of the best way to tell their tribal members about the contract policy.
• Helping Indian leaders to identify staff training needs of those who will be drawing up contracts and starting service programs.
• Helping Indian leaders to recruit personnel.
• Providing advice and counsel on negotiation and implementation of a service contract.

The year-old Center, one of a few non-profit Indian consulting firms in the country, is set up to involve Indians in leadership and professional roles in training and research for the social and economic betterment of Indian people. The Center is directed by a ten-member board of Indian leaders and professionally-trained Indians. Board president is Lawrence Hart, a Cheyenne from Clinton, Oklahoma.

Current projects are: a U.S. Public Health Service contract to evaluate the Community Health Representative program; a BIA contract to look into the attitudes of Bureau superintendents on Bureau structure and policy, and a contract with the Gila River Indian community to find out how the people feel about housing. The Center sponsored a symposium on "Anthropology and the American Indian" at the American Anthropological Association convention in San Diego, Calif., last fall.